Manivannan 'pile-on' misses the most important question

Newly elected Green MSP Q Manivannan, citizen of India, and temporary resident of Scotland as an international student, committed no crime in standing for election to the Scottish Parliament. His party, which placed him on its regional list, was likewise acting perfectly lawfully.

Many MSPs appear to have forgotten three important things this past week, while chuntering various levels of outrage at Manivannan becoming one of the representatives for the Edinburgh and Lothians East region. His success was influenced by the following factors: First, MSPs voted unanimously for the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025, which allows foreign nationals with limited right to remain or requiring visa approval to stand for election. 

Second, the d’Hondt electoral system means voters’ regional vote goes to a party, which usually means less pre-election scrutiny of list candidates.

Third, because the Scottish Greens appear to have a questionable appreciation of the social contract between voters and their representatives.

It was entirely predictable voters would be aghast to learn non-citizens can now become MSPs. The past week of intense scrutiny cannot have been pleasant for Manivannan, but what on earth can the Greens have expected?

It is not wrong to ask whether someone with no guarantee of fulfilling a full term was ever a suitable candidate. There is a core moral question here, given the privilege of election to public office. Is it morally correct for non-citizens of a country to make laws affecting it?

It’s tiresome to see the usual suspects wail these are atrocious questions rooted in prejudice. It is extraordinarily rare for non-citizens of a country to have the right to stand for national election, even where non-citizenship allows limited voting rights.

It’s not outlandish to suggest, were a Brit to demand similar rights while resident in India, the Greens cheering Manivannan would grumble about colonialist attitudes.

Scottish politics often feels incapable of having serious discussions. Former First Minister Humza Yousaf thundered about the ‘pile-on’ Manivannan has received since being elected, for example. Other MSPs – including those who voted for the Act permitting this – responded with outrage, while others seemed to cop the negative optics, emphasising the supposed point of the change in Scotland’s electoral law was to make our democracy more ‘inclusive.’

When handling the bill at Stage 3, Jamie Hepburn – then Minister for Parliamentary Business argued, “Since 1999 the Scottish Parliament has improved participation, extended voting rights, and enabled more people to stand for election… this legislation seeks to continue the evolution of our democracy.”

He explicitly stated the Act “empowers foreign nationals who have made their lives here to stand for election.”

This is part of the ‘New Scots’ strategy of the SNP government, a phrase growing in usage this past few years, becoming a core policy focus across Scottish political, arts, and culture institutions.

While it’s entirely correct to ensure temporary visitors and international students feel welcome, many feel uneasy witnessing American students, for example, uploading TikTok clips saying they’ve been residents less than ten months but were delighted to participate in the Scottish elections.

Many Scots – new or otherwise - have countered how unfathomable it is to them to imagine living somewhere temporarily and having voting rights, never mind standing for election. But, I’m familiar with the thinking that justifies this.

There’s a strange blank slate-ism about Scotland amongst a cohort in our elite universities, which I used to – irritatingly and frequently - come up against. As a former inhabitant of the Edinburgh literary/academic crossover scenes in the city, I recognise entirely the kind of thinking behind Manivannan’s recent election campaign video.

“Edinburgh is not a place, it is a story,” he says, joined by a cast of young people. “Radical minds, growing revolutionary in our city slums,” says one young woman. Edinburgh has no slums, of course. But, I highly doubt any of those in the film have ever lived in the city’s pockets of deprivation in the outskirts.

“Take it, it’s yours!” they all intone to close the film, part poem, part propaganda, all very student literary society.

There’s no real appreciation for Edinburgh’s history here, never mind its current lifelong residents, priced out weekly in no small part due to the council’s repeated failures to appreciate the impact of student housing being built on land desperately needed for permanent residencies. But ‘take it’ Manivannan has, and one can only hope this new electoral law change won’t prove folly.

There’s a lack of consistency - itself a hallmark of Scottish politics this past decade – from defenders of the Act. I’m quite certain if another party had stood a Russian, hard right, student activist with no permanent residency top of its regional list in Glasgow, we’d be having a very different conversation than one about ‘pile-ons.’

I doubt we’d be talking about how ‘empowering’ this is if it had benefitted the hard right rather than the hard left, as it might well have done.

Encouraging as many people as possible to engage in politics is an objectively good thing. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate questions to be asked about non-citizens becoming legislators. MSPs must show more sense when passing bills that impact – or fundamentally alter - our democracy.